Saturday, February 28, 2009

...the President in his address to Congress finally spilled the beans and unveiled our new hero in his final form: the Incredible Bulk, Statezilla, Governmentuan, a colossus bestriding the land like a, er, colossus. What superpowers does he have? All of them! He can save the economy, he can reform health care, he can prevent foreclosures, he can federalize daycare, he can cap the salary of his archenemies the sinister Fat Cats who “pad their pay checks and buy fancy drapes.”

No longer will the citizenry cower in fear of fancy drapes: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! With one solar panel on the roof of his underground headquarters, Governmentuan can transform the American energy sector and power his amazing Governmentmobile, the new environmentally friendly supercar that soon we’ll all be driving because we’ll be given government car loans to buy the government cars! He’ll have hundreds of thousands of boy sidekicks, none of whom will ever be allowed to drop out of high school because (in the words of his famous catchphrase) “that’s no longer an option!” “Gee, thanks, Governmentuan!” says Diplomaboy the Boy Wonder, as he goes off to college to study Gender As A Social Construct until he’s 34...

And our hero can do this all without raising taxes on any family earning under $250,000!

...Noting the president’s assurance that the 250-grand-and-under crowd won’t pay “a single dime” more in taxes, the Wall Street Journal calculated that if you took every single dime — that’s 100 per cent — of the over-250K crowd, it barely begins to pay for this program, even before half of them flee the the country. The $4 trillion Congress is planning on spending next year (2010) could just about be covered if you took every single dime of the taxable income of every American earning over $75,000.

Can you guess how many tall tales Obama told during the course of his short speech?

The over-under is 8. Enter your guess here:

As for the policy presciptions that Obama promised?

The economic crisis we face is the worst since the Great Depression.

Lie. By any measure, that's a pile of fecal matter. The disastrous Jimmy Carter administration of the seventies presided over a much, much worse economy. Of course, Obama's catastrophic spending programs -- devoting billions to ACORN, trial lawyers and unions -- will further devastate an already fragile environment.

Nine months ago - back in January - I called for a stimulus plan to provide immediate relief for states, along with tax rebates to get money directly to middle class families and a foreclosure prevention fund to help them keep their homes. Senator McCain, on the other hand, insisted that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. And his advisors openly mocked the stimulus plan before Congress - one referred to it, and I quote, as "borrowing money from the Chinese and dropping it from helicopters."

Tax rebates? Lie.

I called for $25 billion to help states and local governments pay for services and avoid raising property taxes, because tax increases are the last thing our families need in an economy like this.

I heard Senator McCain say that I'm more concerned with who gets your piece of the pie than with growing the pie.

Can't argue with that one.

I'll start by creating a new American Jobs tax credit for each new employee that companies hire here in the United States over the next two years.

Lie.

I'll stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas and invest in companies that create good jobs right here in Florida.

Stupid idea and a lie to boot.

...I'll help small businesses get back on their feet by eliminating capital gains taxes...

Lie.

...and giving them emergency loans to keep their doors open and hire workers.

Lie.

...I've proposed $15 billion a year to create five million new green jobs over the next decade - jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced; jobs building solar panels and wind turbines and fuel-efficient cars; jobs that will help us end our dependence on oil from Middle East dictators.

That's why I'm running for President - to give them that chance and rebuild our economy and ensure that our children and grandchildren have the same opportunities that we had.

Lie. There's not a single instance -- in all of recorded history -- where a massive expansion of welfare, regulation and government bureaucracies helped an economy grow.

In fact, a more jaded individual would believe that Obama and his cohorts are intentionally destroying our currency, massively increasing the size of government and undermining our national security posture for nefarious purposes.

Postscript: If you guessed Over, you've won our little game. But, in truth, either answer means we've all lost.

Question: How can anyone justify defense cuts while proposing a trillion dollar "Stimulus" and an additional 9,000 earmarks in a discretionary spending bill, which include the study of tattoo removal, protection of field mice, and mag-lev trains to nowhere? In fact, the New York Post posits that the budget will mean "about $70 billion less for defense next year".

* * *

Any moonbatsliberals progressives out there who want to try and answer one or more of these questions have an open forum here.

In the early twentieth century Francis Galton witnessed a contest at a county fair. Asked to estimate the weight of a prize ox, spectators and cattle experts alike submitted their guesses on slips of paper.

After the contest was finished, Galton collected the hundreds of submissions. He painstakingly added them up to determine the average of the crowd's estimates.

He was astounded to discover that the crowd's average was closer to the true weight of the ox than any single guess, including those of the "experts".

The book's central assertion is that a diverse collection of individuals, each operating independently, is likely to offer better predictions and decisions than individuals, even so-called "experts".

Intrade.com, the well-known prediction market, selected the winner of every single U.S. Senate race in 2006. No "talking head" pundit was able to match this record.

The largest and best known prediction market is the stock market.

A 2007 study by Arnerich & Messina illustrated the stock market's efficiency in stark terms. Since 1994 there have been only two years in which more than 50% of professional money managers were able to beat the S&P 500 index. In 1997 only 11% of managers beat the index.

Over the last year most investors in the equity markets have taken horrific losses. In September -- just a couple of months ago -- the Dow Jones Industrial Average hovered near 12,000. Today it closed at 7,182.

What happened in September? Let's look at the Intrade presidential futures market. The blue line represents the Obama futures while red represents McCain.

If we zoom into the September-to-November timeframe, we'll see something very enlightening. By late September it was increasingly clear to Intrade.com bettors that Obama was going to win the election. From 9/28 to 9/29 Obama's Intrade price went from 57 to 61, which represented a huge jump.

Note what happened to the stock market at nearly the exact same time. Around September 29th the market began its collapse. Mapping the political events to the market's reactions make the effects crystal clear.